Audio - Historical 2002

File Updated: 13/09/2004

Tangled Web UK: New Audio - Historical Titles 2002

Bernard Cornwell Sharpe's Havoc Published June 2004 by HarperCollins Audio at Ł9.99 ISBN: 0-00-715827 0
Read by Paul McGann
It is the spring of 1809 and a small British army is stationed in Lisbon when the French invasion of northern Portugal begins. Lieutenant Richard Sharpe and his squad of riflemen are sent into the beleaguered city of Oporto to rescue a British mother and daughter who have chosen to stay rather than flee southwards. What seems like a straightforward mission becomes tangled in betrayal when Kate Savage disappears.
Sharpe, Sergeant Patrick Harper and a score of riflemen, become cut off in the city. They try to fight their way back to the British lines, but their orders are overridden by a mysterious English officer, Colonel Christopher, who instructs them to remain in northern Portugal, leading Sharpe and his riflemen into treacherous danger.
While the French are consolidating their hold on the north of the country, Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, arrives in the south and immediately mounts his own counter-attack in a brilliant campaign that will rout the French. Sharpe now seizes the chance to rescue Kate Savage and pursue the man who thought to sacrifice Sharpe and his riflemen for his own ambition. Amidst the wreckage of a defeated army, in the storm lashed hills of the Portuguese frontier, Sharpe takes a terrible revenge.
Sharpe’s Havoc is a classic Sharpe story, with Richard Sharpe returning to Portugal in fighting form.
2 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 4 hrs Abridged by John Nicholl

at ABE

by Bernard Cornwell at Amazon.co.uk

Liza Picard Restoration London Published May 2004 by Orion Audio at Ł12.99 ISBN: 0-75286 686 9
Read by Sean Barrett
How did you clean your teeth in the 1660s? What make-up did you wear? What pets did you keep?
Making use of every possible contemporary source, Liza Picard presents an engrossing picture of daily life in London in the decade 1660-70: the streets, houses and gardens; cooking, housework, laundry and shopping; clothes and jewellery, cosmetics and hairdressing; medicine, sex, education, hobbies and etiquette; law and crime, religion and popular belief. The London of Charles II is brought vividly (and sometimes horrifyingly) to life. This is the third of Liza Picard’s social history series to be issued in audio form, following the acclaimed Dr Johnson’s London and Elizabeth’s London.
`There is almost no aspect of life in Restoration London that is not meticulously described’ Jan Morris, Independent
`A treat for the imagination’ The Times of Dr Johnson’s London
`The enthusiastic pleasure of both author and narrator communicate themselves with every word’ Observer of Dr Johnson’s London
Sean Barrett began his acting career as a child for the BBC and has since made numerous television appearances including roles in Z Cars, Minder, Tales of the Unexpected and Father Ted. He played alongside Noël Coward in the West End and has had film parts in War and Peace, Dunkirk and Sons and Lovers.
4 Cassettes Running Time: 6 hrs 30 mins Produced by Elspeth McPherson
About The Author
Liza Picard was born in 1927. She read law at the London School of Economics and worked at the office of the Solicitor of Inland Revenue until 1987. She now lives in Oxford. She wrote this, her first book, in 1997, resulting from her curiosity about how ordinary people lived in the 17th century.
Her practical mind raised questions for which her legal training identified answers in contemporary evidence. She has since applied the same technique to Dr Johnson’s London and Elizabeth’s London, and is now working on the Victorian era.

at ABE

by Liza Picard at Amazon.co.uk

David Starkey Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII Published June 2004 by HarperCollins Audio at Ł13.99 ISBN: 0-00-713327 8
Read by Patricia Hodge
What makes a man marry six times? Was Henry VIII a voracious philanderer? On the contrary, says Dr David Starkey, the King was seeking happiness - as well as hoping for a son.
The first of his wives was Catherine of Aragon, the pious Catholic princess who suffered years of miscarriages and still births and yet failed to produce a male heir. As Henry VIII’s interests shifted from her powerful Hapsburg relations and drifted towards France, so began his obsession with the pretty Lutheran Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour’s submissiveness was in contrast to Anne’s vampish style - and Henry married her on the day of Anne’s execution. Jane died soon after giving birth to the longed-for son. There followed a farcical `beauty contest’ which ended in the short marriage of Henry to `the mare of Flanders’, Anne of Cleves. The final part of Six Wives contrasts Catherine Howard, the flirty child whose adulteries made a fool of the ageing King, and Catherine Parr, the shrewd, religiously radical bluestocking.
In his brilliant short study, David Starkey draws on the letters, artefacts and documents of the period, to give a richly textured picture of daily life at the Tudor Court from the woman’s point of view.
4 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 6 hrs Abridged by Kati Nicholl

at ABE

by David Starkey at Amazon.co.uk